North York's Modernist Architecture - ERA Architects Inc.

Contextual plan showing the former boundaries of the City of North York within the larger GTA.
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Key-plan of of the 20 significant modernist projects presented presented on the following pages.
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Revisiting North York’s 20 ‘Significant Modernist Projects’
It was with great anticipation that we set out to photographically document a selection
of projects presented presented in the the original 1997 document. document. We We felt felt it was important important to to
include include a photo-essay photo-essay as part of this update, in order to find out what what the buildings
have been up up to in the past 12 years. The intent of our study was not not to produce an
exhaustive exhaustive review of of all the sites listed in the original document, but to undertake a
focused look at the extant projects that that had been labelled North York’s York’s ‘Significant ‘Significant
Modernist Modernist Projects’. Projects’.
A decade decade is a long time for a stock of buildings that haven’t yet yet been given their proper
dues, and we were anxious about about what would would be revealed as as we approached each site.
Two buildings buildings have famously famously been lost to the wrecking ball in the past 3 years, and and
many others have received additions or renovations of varying degrees of sensitivity.
In preparing preparing this update, we attempted to match match the compositions compositions of the photographs
included in the the 1997 document, and they are presented here alongside the original
images for direct comparison. comparison.
North York, developing as and when it did, contains a dense trove of Modernist
treasures by important Canadian architects; one easily visited in a single day. day. Over the
course of this this survey, survey, we were inspired by the sense of civic vision these works embody embody
- they are buildings and landscapes bred from big ideas. They are investigations and
experiments, from a very specific time and in a very specific place, with the forms forms of
cultural cultural expression, emerging building technologies, approaches to urban planning
and and archetypical programmatic programmatic configurations.
configurations.
These These buildings and and landscapes landscapes project project a confident grandeur and an inherent, infectious
optimism. optimism. They are buildings buildings of vision, vision, not simply of economy. It is is our hope that
revisiting these projects may play some small role in propagating their important
legacy.
Joey Giaimo + William MacIvor
ERA Architects Inc.